Doctored (2 page)

CHAPTER TWO

Madison had been working steadily for several weeks with just her normal Sunday and Monday days off.  It meant that Scott took the kids every Saturday and she got to run errands and get things done on Monday when businesses were open and the kids weren’t with her.  She had every Sunday with the kids and they frequently went to the beach, hiking, or did something else together.  They enjoyed each other and while they occasionally missed doing things as a family, at least Scott and she were cordial and could get along for the most part.  He was still trying to puzzle out why she had divorced him last year.  She just couldn’t cope anymore, didn’t want to try, and wasn’t willing to put up with him anymore.  She needed to be happy with herself and while she wasn’t
yet
, at least she was happy with the kids.

She was working so much she hadn’t caught up on the gossip of who was dating whom, the new arrivals, who was leaving the hospital to work elsewhere, and other happenings.  She was, however, generating gossip because she had been getting a bouquet of some type every week.  Every.  Single.  Week.  This last week she had gotten six African violets of different types and varieties.  She hadn’t known there were different kinds.  She’d seen them at the store, thought they were beautiful, but never purchased one for herself.  Now she had six in her windows at home and she loved them.  Whoever was sending these things had put a lot of thought into it and she wondered who it was.  She was enjoying the mystery of it, but didn’t like the gossip it generated.

This week it was a couple of Proteas.  She had never even seen these flowers here.  The last time she saw them was in…Africa.  It was at that moment that she realized each of the bouquets, each of the plants she had received, all had Africa in common.  Was someone playing some sort of trick on her?  Few, if any, realized she had worked with the Red Cross in Africa a decade ago.  Why would someone do something like this?  Now she was feeling kind of uneasy.

Because she had been working so hard, she hadn’t paid attention to the gossip, not that she normally did.  Today she heard her coworkers at lunch talking about the new doctor, a Doctor Kearney who had been romanced into coming to work here at their hospital.  Apparently he was hard to get hold of and had been highly sought after from various facilities all over the world.  An infectious disease specialist, he had worked in the jungles.  When someone mentioned Africa, Madison began to rack her brain trying to remember if she had met a Doctor Kearney there in her time, but couldn’t recall anyone by that name.  It was troubling to her.

“Apparently she told Doctor Stanoslovsky to get the
hell
out of
her
surgery,” Bette was saying as she finished her yogurt at lunch.

Madison clued in as she had found herself daydreaming about Africa, something that seemed to be on her mind a lot recently.  “Who told Stan-the-man that?” she asked, laughing.  The man was a pompous know-it-all and they called him Stan-the-man behind his back as Stanoslovsky was such a mouthful.

“Doctor Kearney,” she said exasperated.  “Weren’t you listening?”

The others chuckled at her and Madison flushed.  “Yes, I was listening, but you said her…I thought Doctor Kearney was a man….”

Shaking her head, Bonnie chimed in.  “No, no, no, Doctor Kearney is a
woman
,” she clarified.  “Pay attention,” she teased.

Trying to catch up, Madison shook her head, her red curls bouncing, laughing at her friends and coworkers.  “Okay, okay.  I’ve been out of it,” she admitted.

“Haven’t you met Doctor Kearney yet?” Bette asked, curious.

She shook her head again as she grabbed a bite.  Swallowing she answered, “No, haven’t seen her,” she admitted.

“Oh, she’s nice.  Very down to earth.  She’s been all over the world.  Amazing!” Bette gushed.

“She’s really attractive too, in a hard kind of way,” Sheila piped up and then blushed.  Everyone knew Sheila was bisexual.

A few felt the need to tease her about that and proceeded to do so for the next few minutes.

“How is she in surgery, and why did she kick Stan-the-man out of surgery?” Madison finally interrupted the teasing to ask.

“She’s innovative, and that’s what he got on his high horse about.  Apparently her technique was something he hadn’t seen before.  When he kept trying to second-guess her, she kicked his arrogant ass out.  Doctor Foster backed her up as it was her surgery and she was doing a terrific job.”  Bette was pleased as all get out that he had been put in his place.  Some doctors treated the nurses horribly and he was one of them.

“Isn’t that the patient who had gangrene or something?” someone else asked.

Bonnie nodded and put in, “Yeah, Doctor Kearney used maggots to clean out the wound before she would operate.”

“Maggots?” Madison asked, a distasteful look on her face.  Looking down at her meal, it suddenly didn’t seem as tasty and she pushed it aside.  She went to take a drink of her juice and looked at it suspiciously—as though it carried some of the disgusting slugs in it.

“Yeah, she got some sterilized maggots or something, and put them in the wound.  They ate all the diseased flesh so she was able to operate and close up the healthy tissue,” Bette explained and then laughed at Madison’s expression.  “Come on, you have to admit that’s clever.  They eat only the bad flesh, the corpulent stuff, and leave the healthy tissue.”

“Yeah, but
maggots
,” she sneered, her nose wrinkling at the thought.

“She explained to Doctor Foster that she had seen the technique used before and felt it was appropriate here as they didn’t want to be cutting out all that flesh and get too much of the good stuff.  This way, all that was left was to kill the maggots and clean the wound, stitching together the remaining healthy flesh.”

“It’s known as
maggot debridement therapy,” Bonnie explained

Madison was done with lunch and with the conversation.  She got up to take her tray to the trash when Bonnie piped up with, “There she is,” using her chin to point at the doctor who had just come into the cafeteria.  She was surrounded by the crème de la crème of the doctors in their small-knit community, all vying for her attention.

Madison looked up to see high-top sneakers in rainbow colors.  She had never seen any like that before.  They were very colorful…and very bright.  Her eyes followed the high-tops up the legs.  Long slacks on a lean waist led up to a buxom figure that was very attractive.  Her doctor’s lab coat was a brilliant white, her name embroidered across the lapel in red versus the black that the rest of the doctors had.  As Madison’s gaze took in the woman she stared, wondering if she had met her before.  She looked very familiar…and yet…not.  She looked to be in her early twenties, but for all her experience, she had to be in her thirties or forties at least.  Her hair was a deep brown and had shades of blonde and more red streaks in it.  Madison couldn’t tell if it was real, natural, or colored.  She watched the woman for a moment, trying to figure out if she knew her and why she seemed so familiar.  It was as the woman lifted her hand, the one with a large signet ring on the ring finger, and began rubbing her eyebrow thoughtfully with the tips of her fingers, that Madison realized she did indeed know the woman.  The woman wasn’t in her twenties after all, she was the same age as Madison’s thirty-six years.  The gesture so familiar, so endearing, she knew who that woman was in an instant.  Just then the woman looked across the cafeteria to find Madison gazing at her and although at first startled, she smiled in delight.  She said something to her companions and came across the lunchroom to meet her.

“Hello, Maddie, it’s been a while,” she greeted her familiarly.

* * * * *

All in an instant she recalled how she had met Doctor Kearney.  She hadn’t known her as Doctor Kearney…then.  It had been a misunderstanding of gross proportions. 

As Maddie and three other relief workers drove out to the site in East Africa to begin their tour of duty with UNICEF they were admiring the countryside…the hot, desolate countryside.  It was dusty, it was barren, but it wasn’t what any of them had expected.  There were rolling hills covered in brown grasses, brush, even occasional trees. 

“This is our dry season,” the rich South African accent of their guide told them.  He explained that the seasons consisted of the rainy season and the dry season, not much more than that.  “It is hot even in our winter here,” he rolled his ‘Rs’ richly and with relish.

Maddie decided she liked how he spoke and smiled whenever he looked her way, as if to encourage his explanations of what they were seeing and what he was telling.  “Do you get floods?” she asked to get him to keep speaking.

“Yes, very badly,” his own million-watt smile faded, the rich white teeth against his very black skin now hiding behind his grimace as he explained how dire the consequences of flooding could be to the people they would be helping.  “It is very primitive,” he explained as he gestured at the countryside, “like nothing you are used to.”  He went on to explain how they were teaching primitive people modern techniques to farm and use the land.  “They don’t listen,” he said sadly.  “They want to plow up everything and not save the land in spots to let the water run off safely, which leads to massive erosion.  This is very bad.”

The ride to their camp in Mamadu took three hours from the port on the Red Sea that they had flown into.  Lamish was a coveted port and one of the many reasons for conflict in this part of Africa.  By the time they arrived they were all covered in dust, half asleep, and very cranky.  The two Americans—Maddie and a farmer from the Midwest who was going to help to teach new techniques—were acquainted since they had met on their plane from Paris to Africa.  There were two others: one, a nurse like Maddie from Australia, and two, a bureaucrat from Switzerland.  Maddie was certain the farmer wouldn’t last long.  He had ideas to help the natives, but didn’t want to learn from them.  The little she had surmised from him showed him to be narrow-minded.  She had found you could learn a lot from people if you just listened.  He was so certain he was going to change their world, he forgot they’d been husbanding this land for centuries.

“No doctor?” Lakesh had asked when he picked them up in the port.  Their luggage was stacked high on the battered Rover he was driving and tied down to the roof.

The four of them exchanged looks and shrugged.

“None of you is Doctor Cooper?” he inquired.  His intense black eyes looking out at them, a stark contrast to the whites of his eyes that were tinged with a little yellow.  Maddie wondered about that yellow and if it could be jaundice. 

They shook their heads and introduced themselves.  Maddie was a nurse and Harlan a farmer.  Leida was the other nurse from Australia, and the bureaucrat was Thomas, pronounced ‘Toe-mass.’  He made sure to pronounce it slowly, clearly and articulately so they all got it right.  Maddie hid her amusement at his arrogance.

“Hmmm, they won’t be happy without Doctor Cooper,” he stated as he herded them into the Rover.  Three sat in the back, Maddie, Leida, and Harlan, and Thomas took the front seat as though he belonged there.

Leida introduced herself to Maddie saying, “I guess us nurses will be working together, eh?”

“I’m sure we will,” and they chatted a while with Harlan between them.  He tried to contribute, but his opinions centered around what his farming techniques would do to enrich these poor underdeveloped countries’ economics.  Maddie and Leida had exchanged a look that showed they had a mutual understanding and opinion about that.  Thomas ignored them all except to talk to Lakesh occasionally, usually to ask how much longer the trip would be.

“Doctors Without Borders, they fly in, they fly out,” Lakesh explained, a quarter of the way into their long drive.  “Doctor Cooper supposed to fly in, miss flight,” he further explained.  “Then to drive, but you no see.”  His pigeon English was endearing, at least to Maddie’s ears.  He didn’t point it out, and Maddie wondered if she was the only one to realize there wouldn’t have been room in the Rover for another person.

They were nearly to their destination when they saw another Rover on the side of the road.  A shapely derriere was visible as someone leaned into the engine with the hood propped up.  At the noise of their vehicle, the head popped up out of the engine.  They were all surprised to see the grease-spattered face of a white woman.  She made it worse by rubbing her nose on the back of her hand and trying to flag them down.  Lakesh slowed their vehicle.

“You need help?” he said jovially in English.

“I’m headed for Mamadu.  Am I on the right track?” a decidedly Bostonian accent greeted him with a smile.

“Yes, this is the road to Mamadu,” he confirmed.  “You a mechanic?” his voice sounded hopeful.

“Well,” she said, spreading her arms and showing her greasy hands, “when I have to be.”

“Ah, good.  We need ‘em mechanics,” he assured her. 

“Well, I’ll catch up to you all later,” she said dismissively since no one had offered to help.  They all looked at her curiously.  The deep browns and blondes of her hair couldn’t hide the definitive red streaks in it.  She was perspiring in the hot African sun, the grease and the sweat mingling on her face and dripping into a t-shirt that barely hid her assets.  Maddie and the others smiled and nodded.  They could get acquainted when they all met in Mamadu.  Lakesh drove on and waved.  If she had wanted help, he would have stopped, but she seemed to have it well in hand.